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| No | 90% | 18 votes | Total: 20 votes | |
| Yes | 10% | 2 votes |
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Add to FavoritesAre the brainless suggesting that Wall Street be immune to antitrust lawsuits? What kind of lobbyists would even suggest further immunity for the super rich and overpaid? The USA's behavior at Guantanamo Bay has already been denigrated by its own Supreme Court. Is the USA trying to become a monolithic oligarchic dictatorship of wealth with a presidential veto that overrides all appearance of law and democracy? I thought the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth Rock to enjoy differences. Now they appear ro be eliminating differences as well as the very religion they went there to celebrate.
It appears that the USA is forgetting its history and claim to uniqueness. If it cannot learn from that, then look at Lloyds of London. Once Lloyds was immune to lawsuits. It was a gentleman's club which one joined by producing mere twenty-five thousand pounds. There was no limited liability for Lloyds members, but this became no responsibility. The same would apply to Wall Street it it was allowed to run unchecked.
The ships of the world depend on Lloyds for Insurance. The great Tontine bell rings there if a ship sinks anywhere in the world. Lloyds represented itself as an emblem of good faith, where a gentleman's word was his bond. Many individuals were insured at Lloyds, from Betty Grables legs to individual seafarers who sailed foreign flag vessels. Then it happened. Insurance companies stopped paying. They decided that they did not want to. In the eighties many suffered from this denial both in Britain and overseas.
Junk bonds were another symbol of failure of good faith. In Insurance and Insurable matters both parties are required to practice Uberrimae Fidae [utmost good faith]. Because lawyers exist, those who suffered from the immune, and could combine in class action lawsuits, changed tradition. They won the right to sue those who had been immune to lawsuits.
Either Wall Street is subjected to lawsuits or it lacks credibility as a tool for investors. If a statute ending or diminishing liability protects them it will still be subjected to the litigious will of those who object. The USA is the most litigious nation in the world. Learn from yourselves before you find that you are learning from precedents in other common law countries.
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Yes
Security underwriters on Wall Street should be immune to Civil Antitrust Lawsuits, because antitrust is an immoral concept... I give a general example below based on the antitrust accusations originally aimed at Bill Gates.
Antitrust laws are none objective laws with no moral standard. They protect the
value destroyer at the expense of the value producer. All antitrust regulations are
based on anti-capitalistic ideology and collectivist ideas, that sacrifice the
individual to the demands of the State.
Bill Gates is a private enterprise business owner and has the right to own the means
of production and distribution. Only government controls through regulations can
create a monopoly that disallows free competition in the market place, but the fact
that they can do so under force or the threat of force is not a moral sanction to do
so, it is an immoral act and an attack on individual rights.
Yes, it is true that Bill Gates and Microsoft hold much of the market over their
competitors. ....But this is simply because Microsoft has proved itself a better
competitor. It has delivered the products that the consumer wants and at prices
they are willing to pay.
By there very nature antitrust laws are anti-man. They are based on a collectivist
ideology that assumes man is a "sacrificial animal" who has no property rights and
thus no individual rights and can be sacrificed to the whim of any thug who so
demands it.
Property rights and individual rights are not divisible. When you attack a man you
attack his property, attack the property you attack the man. An individuals video
recorder is their private property as is their body, to damage either (including
stealing their video recorder) is an act of force. Certainly, stealing a video recorder is less damaging than initiating force or indeed threatening to initiate force against an individual. But it is not a case of morality by degree, that is not the issue. The issue is individual rights to the ownership of one's private property (one's body, one's mind, one's goods), without fear of force or threat of force.
The facts are the opposite of the anti-man collectivists who wish to curtail the
success of the producers, who they judge by their "standards" become over
successful. Individuals such as Bill Gates should be applauded and held up as men of
the highest virtue; in their ability to create new values and raise living standards
globally.
These men and women are rare and should be secured in their right to trade freely
and openly in the market place, without government restrictions and regulations.
This article is not meant as an applaud to Bill Gates. Whether you like or dislike Bill Gates is not the issue. The fact is that antitrust laws are bad laws.
Learn more about this author, Craig Hawkins.
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